Tuesday, July 05, 2011

cover lover: TMBG --> Chumbawamba

Two things about this cover: First, I wish TMBG had dug a little deeper and discovered some Chumba songs really worth disseminating into popular consciousness--like anything on Pictures of Starving Children Sell Records or even WYSIWYG

Second, though, even with their limited political consciousness, I think John and John get several things right in their "Tubthumping" cover even without overt awareness of it: the communal nature of the song, the distorted social values that accompany pub-hopping (Linnell distorts the audio during the drinking verses) and, musically speaking, a sense of the compartmentalized stories simultaneously playing out in the song. All in all, a decent cover.


They Might Be Giants covers Chumbawamba

2 comments:

Island Near Texas said...

To be fair, Matt, they didn't get the option of which song to choose. AV Club selected the list of songs available to the bands and I think they had a better sense of what was going on than might be conveyed.
Not their best work, but in terms of a cover, pretty good.

Matt J Stannard said...

Thanks for the clarification. That makes a lot more sense.